���˿���

About 2,000 people have been evacuated from the Eiffel Tower in Paris and its surrounding park after a bomb scare, French officials say.

They say the alarm was raised after an anonymous call to the company which manages the famous landmark.

A police cordon was formed and about 1,000 people were moved to the banks of the nearby River Seine. Officers with sniffer dogs searched the area.

But police later said it was a false alarm.

"Nothing was found," a French police officer told AFP news agency.

The 324m (1,063ft) iron lattice tower, built in 1889, is one of the world's most popular tourist attractions.

The evacuation of the tower and the Champ de Mars park took place calmly shortly before 2100 local time (1900 GMT), police said.

Within hours, the Saint-Michel train station - which was the target of a deadly attack in 1995 - was also briefly evacuated following a similar threat.

The French government increased security at certain sites between 2 August and 15 September, in part because of threats from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, French TV channel TF1 reported.